The leasing deal that Sony Pictures has made with Marvel Studios allows the world's greatest wall-crawler to make an appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe good and proper - for a lot of fans of the movies, it's about damn time. But what if Sony had a solid plan where they didn't have to do that?

We think we might have an idea for that, looking at various versions of the character, supporting casts, villains, storylines, timelines and even different types of films that can be done with the diversity of Spider-Man's character. Just take a look at his original medium, and the answer can be found there.

The 2015 Oscars are, finally, this weekend and if you haven't placed or bets or filled out your ballot, then we have you covered!

Helping us this year between so many of the different races in play among many of the categories (Best Picture, Director, Actor, the Screenplays, etc), we talked to our good friend Justin Edwards on not only the scenarios that we could see on the big night, but also what could happen and his official picks accordingly. Follow along, and we hope everyone does well - good luck on your picks!

Oakland University journalist major Jacinta Carroll got to see her, and ours as well!, good friend Danny Santos about his job at The Mystic Mountain in Royal Oak, Michigan reading tarot cards. With his work in tarot, palm reading and more, Danny talks about how embracing the spiritual world has helped him and his customers in their life and beyond.

We can't thank Jacinta, and Danny as always, enough for sharing this one with us!

So. There was a lot of OUTRAGE over the Academy Award nominations, weren't there (if you missed it, here's our specific take on the OUTRAGE we had)? A lot of surprises, a lot of films left off the table and in the cold, and one particular picture in question was an overwhelming favorite in 2014 which was The LEGO Movie. Not nominated for Best Animated Feature sent social media into a tailspin (and opened up the category actually) and especially one of our friends and partners in Steve Killius.

Over at the RoboFist's Revenge Tumblr, Steve laid out his digressions with The LEGO Movie not being nominated in the category and the Academy Awards in general and in return, we had a number of issues with his issues. So, let's all get together and do a podcast about it and hash out what's up with animation and much more.

Folks, this is a rough one; we love the Oscars, straight-up. For everything that comes with being a historic brand of cinema and the medium's history, there's a lot of good and a lot of bad (and a lot of laughing, and a lot of WTFs) in there. But this year's overall crop of nominations? Yeah, this might have broken us to be honest with you. With a great year of cinema, this is what The Academy is telling us is their best of the year - you could only come up with eight Best Picture nominees? Really?

But we digress.

After the Thursday morning announcements, we look into what went into the nominations, the systematic nature of The Academy itself (including the correct balloting system, the important date change in December) and much much more. Are we still going to watch the Oscars this year? Honestly, we have no idea.

Continuing on our trek of the best from 2014 (as we did in television here), we look to the silver screen in cinema, and luckily for us, it's been a very interesting year in cinema across the board. Actors pulling off multiple-duties, smart blockbusters (!!!), incredible genre-bursting indies, filmmakers branching beyond what we expect of them and much more. We even lay down some of our favorite performances of the year as well (Tyler Perry, folks!).

But, that is not all. Not by a long shot. Aside from 2014, we also list off our favorite films of 2013, and 2012, and 2011.... and every year up to 2004. So we have an entire decade of some of our top films for you to go through!

It's that time of year, and you've probably seen as much of these as we have (and we've seen a lot), but it's time to jot down what are our favorite.... things of the year are from 2014! Since this year is winding down, finally.

So in this feature, we look at our best and favorites on television which wasn't easy to compile since the small screen has really extended beyond its parameters into more unique material, more diverse and fleshed out characters and just more good quality. Check out what we have listed as some of our favorites of the year, and we give some shouts as well. It's been an incredible year of television and it shows no signs of slowing down (hopefully).

Being joined by one of our favorites, and a great contributor as well, in Justin Edwards over Thanksgiving (in the usual hangout spot of Applebees no less - shouts to Calvin!), we go over where the awards season of 2014 is at this point. With Selma and American Sniper premiering at the AFI Fest, what does the field look like with Interstellar, Into the Woods, Unbroken and others joining the crowded race.

We also catch up on Justin's move to Austin, Texas (Robert Rodriguez! Tom Hanks at Whole Foods!) and a number of films that we have seen up til now - always great to be joined by Justin on another podcast!

In a bit of fun cross-promoting that we like to do with Steve Killius' RoboFist's Revenge every once in a while, we have out latest piece from that side of the tracks: the RoboFist crew was gracious enough as always to let Tobi vent his white hot anger about the attention a certain film has gotten lately (a little indie called Exodus: Gods and Kings - you might have heard about it).

Ridley Scott's latest blockbuster venture tells the familiar story of Moses freeing his people from the iron fist of the Pharaoh, and the film - even before being released of course - has come under a lot of scrunity over its cast and whitewashing. Really? That's the problem people who haven't even seen the movie have against this film?

Tobi's anger at their anger takes the issue hard and lays it down on how that's the least of the film's apparent problems. Thanks again to our friends at RoboFist for letting him get all this anger out like one of those Biblical plagues!

Off the Cuff

- Brian Phillips of Grantland's longform piece called 'Sea of Crises' is one of the best works we've read all year and the best entry that we believe the website has done. It touches on a wide-variety of subjects in Japan (sumo, literature, the city, the journey, history) and it reads like a film you experience itself.

"A village warehouse where a film has been playing burns down. We watch one of the characters fall from a fiery balcony. The protagonist runs toward her, but he trips in the crowd. As he’s jostled, his head falls back, and he sees the Milky Way in the night sky. That’s it. There is no resolution."